My layperson’s prediction for the next big thing is cheaper and cheaper techs. I believe that there will be a race to the bottom. Both hardware and software will become commodity. Even all these new AI technologies will become commodities. The true Cyberpunk take is that technology is boring and commonplace.
Lots of amazing hardware is still way too expensive to make it into ordinary consumer hands, or hasn't even been invented yet.
What's keeping the future bleak is a low business appetite for risk. The wringing out of current tech for every last cent will eventually stop when there's no other way to profit but actual R&D. Until then, yeah things will be boring nonsense like AI and ridiculous marketing. We're in the doldrums until some heads start to roll.
So the Apple Watch, for example, could be everything you need to carry around because the voice assistant can literally do everything you can possible think of (besides consume social media and YouTube content).
An all knowing ever listening assistant strapped to your wrist, completely connected to all of your accounts financial, medical, social media, monitoring your vitals, measuring your acceleration, deceleration, steps, altitude, and gps position, bundling it up, and then selling it to whoever wants it for pennies on the dollar.
The good news is that it’s a software solution, not hardware. Open source can only win in software. So it has a chance.
Open source, self-hosted, all-knowing assistant connected to the Internet, that doesn’t leak data to companies, and that filters out all their ads, messaging, and CTA’s.
Tech-savvy people will be able to have one of these pretty soon even if big tech wins the broader market.
That’s a nice thought, but IBM would probably just buy it then kill it.
This is precisely why Linux has overwhelmingly won the server market for at least a decade, but it is still a bit player in consumer devices (except Android, which is barely open source and is controlled by a huge corporation selling our data).
Perhaps open source doesn't devalue consumers in a way that they are a thing to be won - not even in aggregate.
The network devices in my home are open source, as is most of the OS. With my customers it's a mix - but where there is open source, it pretty much just works.
Meanwhile, any complaining is typically due to the ongoing poor treatment by Microsoft, Intuit, et al.
You can win a market, that doesn't mean you're winning the participants. You could at best be winning them over, which is a positive for anyone.
> The network devices in my home are open source, as is most of the OS.
The software on those devices is open source, or in other words, the companies selling your devices are using OSS to power them (or you yourself installed software mostly created for this purpose by similar companies).
That seems like the sticking point with LLM’s as they exist now.